Mechademia 7: Lines of Sight

Tracing the impact of anime and manga’s radical break with Cartesian perspective.

Lines of Sight, the seventh volume in the Mechademia series, explores the various ways in which anime, manga, digital media, fan culture, and Japanese art challenge, undermine, or disregard the concept of Cartesian perspective. More than just a visual mode or geometric system, Cartesianism has shaped nearly every aspect of modern rational thought, from mathematics and science to philosophy and history.

Framed by Thomas Lamarre’s introduction, “Radical Perspectivalism,” the essays here approach Japanese popular culture as a visual mode that employs non-Cartesian formations, which by extension make possible new configurations of perception and knowledge. Whether by shattering the illusion of visual or narrative seamlessness through the use of multiple layers or irregular layouts, blurring the divide between viewer and creator, providing diverse perspectives within a single work of art, or rejecting dualism, causality, and other hallmarks of Cartesianism, anime and manga offer in their radicalization of perspective the potential for aesthetic and even political transformation.